Especially for those that reside near "ground zero" in Surrey St.
This was the main agenda item at our regular cross-party meeting of local MPs and the Dunedin City Council.
While as your locally based MPs we have our share of political battles, we do endeavour to work together for the good of Dunedin where there is a clear common cause.
In short, our question was "what the hell is happening in South Dunedin?".
We hear the exasperation from the community that even relatively modest rainfall events are putting pressure on the wastewater system and that it doesn’t appear to be improving.
It must be truly horrific to hear the rain on your roof and not feel confident that your house won’t have sewage coming up the drains.
Or worse, that larger weather events may flood large swaths of low-lying housing.
Dunedin City Mayor Sophie Barker and councillors were at pains to stress that solutions were top of their priority list and that infrastructure is being upgraded — this is encouraging.
This is a complex problem.
Large catchment, increasing rainfall intensity, low lying basin, high water tables, increased housing density and ageing infrastructure.
There are acres of engineering reports, with economic and psychosocial analysis carried out by the South Dunedin Futures programme.
The question must be, if a major event happened next week would we be any better off than 2015 or 2024?
We are now eleven years past the 2015 floods.
In my view, we have suffered paralysis by analysis and been too slow doing the basics of replacing pipes and pumps.
No matter the analytical inroads we are making, we as local politicians would deservedly be eviscerated by the community of South Dunedin if another major flood occurs without meaningful progress.
This must be the council’s top priority, 5000 households living in fear of rain on the roof is not something this proud city should accept.
The intent of this council is good, but we need to see more action.
